Chrome has been delayed to early 2011. The upcoming Google operating system will power tablets and netbooks from a variety of OEMs. (Source: GbAna)

Alas netbook buyers, you will have to wait for Chrome

Google
was forced to begrudgingly play the role of Grinch, delaying its
Chrome operating system until after the holiday season. That's
disappointing news for holiday shoppers, as it means we won't likely
see any 10" tablets from Google, and Windows will retain
its netbook monopoly a bit longer.

However, the
decision may ultimately be a good one as it will buy Google the time
it needs to fix up and perfect its upcoming product.

Google
CEO Eric Schmidt let slip the news of the delay at the Q&A
session of the Web 2.0 Summit on November 15. He said that
Chrome would ship in the "next few months."

Google
had originally targeted a November-December launch Window when it
announced the upcoming operating system last November. The
tentative launch lineups includes netbook and tablet products from
Acer, ASUS, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Toshiba. It is unclear
whether that lineup has been changed at all, given the delays.

A
Google spokesperson would only say, "We are very happy with the
progress of Google Chrome OS, and we'll have more details to share
later this year."

Chrome OS is a Linux distribution, but
is unusual in that users will exclusively interact with it via
the built-in browser. Programs will run as web apps inside
the company's Chrome
browser, the world's third most-used browser with 70 million
users. File browsing, word processing, and other common tasks
will all be handled via web apps.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

The idea of a light weight, completely web-centric computer that uses Cloud Computing makes a lot of sense. This is where things are going, and they might just shake things up and give MS and Apple a run for their money, if they can execute this properly.

Google isn't likely to release Chrome OS until it's perfect, and they have some big companies on board.

With Google's obvious success and talent (i.e., Android), I think there is something big coming with Chrome OS, something game changing, something that will make MS and Apple cry for mommy.